Microwave ovens should warn of exploding eggs girls has serious eye injury

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 01 May 2004 - 0:00 PDT


Microwave ovens should display clear warnings about exploding eggs, suggest researchers in this week's BMJ (British Medical Journal).

They report a case of a 9 year old girl who sustained a serious eye injury from an exploding microwaved egg.

The girl reheated a previously boiled egg (with an intact shell) using a domestic microwave oven at full power for about 40 seconds. Around 30 seconds later, as she was carrying it to the dining area, the egg exploded with part of it hitting her right eye and face.

She sustained a full thickness corneal perforation and rupture of the lens capsule, reducing her vision to being able to see only hand movements. Three months after treatment, her vision recovered.

In their instruction manuals, manufacturers of microwave ovens warn against heating eggs with an intact shell and recommend multiple piercing before cooking or heating eggs, even those already boiled, write the authors.

In view of the potential seriousness of injury from exploding microwaved eggs, such warnings should be made more obvious, possibly being displayed on the microwave oven itself, they conclude.

(Letter: Penetrating ocular trauma from an exploding microwaved egg)
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/328/7447/1075-a

Contact:
Saurabh Goyal, Specialist Registrar in Ophthalmology, Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, Kent, UK Email: sgoyal@doctors.org.uk

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